RC: Confusion between 2 answer choices

[RonPurewal]

Can I eliminate A based on the below reasoning?

- Minority received the contracts but there is not guarantee that they will take up those contracts, so percentage can't go up.

two things.

1/
when you see 'X was awarded a contract', 'X received a contract', etc., you can infer that X accepted/agreed/signed on the dotted line.
this is basic common-sense reading, but, also, think about the alternative!
if writers had to write, explicitly, 'X received a contract and accepted it' EVERY TIME, just imagine how annoying that would be. that would be absolutely exasperating.
(legal contracts must be written in such a way, to ensure that they don't accidentally contain loopholes or unintended technical deficincies... but that's why legal language looks like nonsense to the average person.)

in fact, if someone received a contract but did not yet accept it, then THAT would be spelled out explicitly (e.g., X received a contract for consideration), since that isn't what a typical reader would typically expect.

MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY
2/
you should not think about RC this way.
this is a trifling issue... and wrong RC answers are ALWAYS wrong for BIG, BIG reasons.
if the correct answer is 'black', then the incorrect answers are 'white', 'white', 'white', and 'white'.

there are at least two fundamental ways in which A is irrelevant.

number one, the cited 'gap' relates to how many minority people are self-employed... and choice A has NOTHING to do with 'how many of these people are self-employed?'.

number two, the cited 'gap' is NOT between minorities and non-minorities.
the 'gap' is between (i) the proportion of minorities in the self-employed crowd and (ii) the proportion of those same minorities in the overall population.
statistically speaking, the issue is whether self-employed people are a properly 'representative sample' of the population. that there is a 'gap' means the sample is not representative.


DO NOT train yourself to look at tiny little corners of these things. by doing so, you're just adding unnecessary complexity—and thus unnecessary difficulty!—to something that is fundamentally simple.

of course, 'simple' does not automatically mean 'easy'. (for people who tend to over-think things, 'simple' is often quite hard!) but 'simple' is the way you need to teach yourself to think about these things.

[RonPurewal]

finally, you can also eliminate A on grounds of pure common sense, because it is preposterous. just think about it—it's pure poppycock.

minorities only represent 17 per cent of the population. thus non-minorities account for the other 83 per cent.
in other words, non-minorities outnumber minorities by a ratio of almost 5 to 1.
it would be ridiculous to propose awarding EQUAL NUMBERS of contracts to these groups, since one of them has 5 times as many people as the other!
(if one classroom has 5 times as many kids as another one, would you bring equal NUMBERS of pizzas to the two classrooms for lunch? i sure hope not.)

[NarenS469]

Thank you so much for your clear explanations. It helped me to look from language and mathematical point of view.

Another question: Option A says "Minority entrepreneurs received.........."
Is this observation ok? : Here we don't care how much 'existing entrepreneurs' are getting since that would not help increase the percentage of self employed. The non-self employed needs the gov. contracts for the gap to be narrowed.

[RonPurewal]

you're still massively over-thinking this.

the issue is limited to the prevalence of minorities among the self-employed. government contracts have no relevance at all.

[RenzoA271]

Hi guys,

I'm a bit confused on this question:

The passage mentions which of the following as a basic consideration in administering minority-business funding programs?

(A) Coming up with the funding for the programs
(B) Encouraging government agencies to assist middle- and high-income minority entrepreneurs
(C) Recognizing the profit potential of small service businesses in urban communities
(D) Determining who should be the recipients of the funding
(E) Determining which entrepreneurs are likely to succeed

The last sentence of the first paragraph states: Since then, the answer given to the fundamental question of who the recipients should be—the most economically disadvantaged or those with the best prospects for business success—has changed, and the social goals of the programs have shifted, resulting in policy changes.

I got stuck on ..."has changed" so I eliminated D and chose C.

What's the correct reasoning here Ron?

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

As with all GMAT questions, we can solve this either by finding a reason for the right answer, or by eliminating all the wrong answer choices. Here, we can look for an answer that is mentioned in the passage, or check to eliminate things that aren't. Probably a combination of these strategies is going to work best in practice.

You've identified the evidence to support D as the right answer, you just need to be clear about matching the wording of the answer to phrases in the text. 'Basic consideration' links to 'fundamental question' - this is the biggest clue. The fact that the answer to the question of who the recipients should be has changed doesn't affect that it's still an important issue. In fact, the bulk of the text concerns that question, making this problem something of an overall meaning problem.

Take some time to test the other answer choices and eliminate them.